AI-driven robotics will be able to learn on the job

Pascal Brier, chief innovation officer at Capgemini 

“Advancements in AI technology have accelerated the development of next-generation robots, building upon innovations in mechatronics and expanding beyond traditional industrial uses. While robotics used to be dominated by hard-coded, task-specific machines, the development of Gen AI is spurring the development of new products (including humanoid robots and collaborative robots – or cobots) that can adapt to diverse scenarios and learn continuously from their environment. According to the Capgemini Research Institute’s upcoming report, 24% of top executives and 43% of Venture Capitalists see AI-driven automation and robotics as one of the top 3 tech trends in data and AI in 2025. With robots becoming more autonomous and AI taking on complex decision-making roles, the future of work may see a shift in the traditional structure of authority. The rise of AI-powered machines that mimic human behaviours challenges our understanding of leadership, responsibility, and collaboration, ultimately pushing us to reconsider the role of humans.

Why it matters: As Industry 4.0 progresses, AI-powered robots will drive efficiency, flexibility, and innovation, becoming key components of intelligent, connected systems that redefine industrial processes. By 2025, advances in natural language processing and machine vision will further enhance their capabilities, allowing robots in manufacturing, logistics, and agriculture to take on more complex roles within the modern workforce.”

Michel Spruijt, president, Brain Corp International

“Polyfunctional robots – those capable of performing multiple tasks and seamlessly switching between them as required – are set to have a growing impact across many industries in 2025. We’ve already seen significant impact in retail where robots seamlessly transition between tasks such as floor care and inventory management.

Looking ahead, we anticipate polyfunctional robots will become increasingly prevalent in manufacturing, logistics, and retail. These robots will be able to adapt to changing production needs, provide value in increasingly complex warehouse environments, and enhance customer experience in a variety of contexts.

One of the most promising aspects of polyfunctional robots is their ability to learn and improve over time. As they encounter new situations and tasks, they are able to adapt to increase efficiency and overall productivity.

In 2025, we expect polyfunctional robots to play an increasingly important role across many sectors, driving innovation, increasing productivity, and creating new opportunities to future-proof industries.”

Robots will be able to adapt to their human colleagues

Volker Spanier, head of manufacturing solutions, EMEA, Epson

“In 2025, we will see a wider adoption of smart manufacturing, which in the UK will be underscored and stimulated by the Government’s new £16 million investment aimed at accelerating digital transformation among SME manufacturers. Alongside this, the expansion of the UK Government’s Made Smarter Innovation programme in 2024, with an additional £37 million in funding for 2025-2026, aims to promote innovation and digitalisation across the manufacturing sector. This programme includes grants for research and development in automation and robotics, as well as tax incentives for manufacturers investing in AI-driven technologies, further catalysing the shift towards smarter, more efficient manufacturing processes.

The increasing productivity and safety of robotics, alongside easier software, will reduce the need for expensive peripheral equipment or complicated programmes for automating operations. Instead, these robots can be quickly and easily repurposed for various products and processes. This year marks a turning point where robotics, with its precision and speed, becomes a partner to humans, enhancing productivity and strengthening the UK’s manufacturing excellence and superiority.”

Adrian Negoita, CTO, Dexory

“Over the past year, the robotics industry has seen impressive progress, both in terms of technological evolution and increased adoption across other industries. It is now firmly an industry for the future that will drive significant change across multiple industries.

As we look ahead to 2025, we can expect to see further improvements in the autonomy and sensor technology integrated into robotic systems. This will allow robots to better navigate their surroundings and handle more complex, unstructured environments. I foresee a world of increased collaboration between humans and robots – this improved autonomy will be essential to that, as it means robots can smoothly operate in the same spaces as humans without safety concerns. This will be key for industries such as logistics, where companies are looking at deploying robots alongside humans to improve efficiency, freeing employees time to focus on strategic planning and driving growth within these industries.

With the continued development and growth of the robotics industry, it is an opportunity for people to upskill themselves for a field that will provide opportunities for growth and allow them to define and shape the future of robotics.”

The post 2025 Informed: Four robotics predictions for the next year appeared first on TechInformed.

Over the past few months, we’ve gathered insightful clips from various tech voices, answering one poignant question: “What are your 2025 tech trend predictions?”

We cover the direction of AI applications, green tech and sustainability developments, payment solutions, HealthTech advancements, the pervasive threats of cybersecurity, and more.

Watch here to find out which predictions from last year came true; TI:TALKS — 2024 Tech Predictions

The post TI:TALKS — 2025 Tech Predictions appeared first on TechInformed.

So says Brian Allen, a deep tech entrepreneur who specialises in survey and subsea technology to support offshore windfarm projects.

Allen made this statement back in September, after it was announced that two subsea businesses, Rovco and Vaarst – which he founded in 2016 and 2021 respectively – would merge under the new brand name of Beam to develop and deploy AI and autonomy enabled services in the offshore wind sector.

Beam’s mission, Allen added, is to deliver real world impact in the offshore wind industry by making it cost competitive with oil and gas “a pivotal step in ending the world’s dependence on fossil fuels.”

Against the tide

Wind farms are proving popular in governments’ energy strategies, given the falling costs of provision and the fact that turbines can be placed ever further out to sea.

But there are challenges. Traditionally offshore windfarm inspection involves dispatching large vessels which carry tethered, underwater robots (Remotely Operated Vehicles) which are used throughout the year to monitor turbines, the integrity of cables and other structures that connect to the seabed.

Firms like Beam are starting to address these issues by leveraging artificial Intelligence, 3D Vision and autonomous robotics. The Bristol-based company’s autonomous robotic solutions have been used in significant projects such as the Seagreen Wind Farm in Scotland, which is the largest offshore site in the country.

Scouting for bines

Beam’s latest capability, Scout, was unveiled at Web Summit in Lisbon earlier this month. Scout is a self-driving subsea robotic system that Beam claims will perform inspections autonomously, using AI and real-time 4K reconstructions and precise navigation to deliver inspections that are quicker and more cost effective.

Beam intends for Scout to be deployed directly by people working on crew transfer vessels during routine visits. This, Beam added, would allow a wider pool of people to manage the subsea maintenance of wind farms and their turbines, helping to alleviate the current offshore wind skills gap which may threaten the sector’s ability to scale.

Beam cofounder and executive VP of service innovation Joe Tidball told TechInformed. “Governments are pushing offshore wind as a viable energy source, but not enough people are involved. In the UK alone there are only 30,000 people in UK offshore wind industries and [for wind energy to be viable] we will need 100,000 by 2030. That’s 70,000 needed.

“Technologies like Scout and the AI processing of the data and us being able to get around these sites more quickly is vital to support the growth of wind as well,” he said.

A deep tech dive

According to Beam CTO Kari Dempsey, Scout is a culmination of many years of technical development. The underwater AV comprises of four key elements including Subslam, a perception system that works up to 6 KM under water and provides 3D reconstructions and stereo 4K video.

“This gives Scout the ability to see, essentially, and to create the 3D models that are critical for doing types of predictive analytics,” she explained.

A second element of Scout is an edge computing AI which gives the robotic vehicle the contextual understanding it needs to act independently.

The third element is sonar sensors and DVLs (the latter measure the speed and direction of UVs), which Dempsey said were important to ensure the inspection bot retained a holistic view while submerged.

 “One of the real challenges is visibility so even in a clear environment you can kick up sand from the floor and then you can’t see so you need a range of sensors,” she explained.

The fourth element of Scout, said Dempsey, was its autonomy algorithms – which were developed “in the wild” on previous projects over a four-year period.

“The algorithms we are using now can assess any kind of infrastructure without having any prior knowledge of it. This gives Scout the ability to navigate and map the environment that it’s in,” she added.

Scout and many of Beam’s other robots are controlled by Pathfinder, also developed by the tech firm, which is an AI-powered operating system that manages the navigation of robots without the need for human interaction.

The 3D, 4K video and other sensor data from Scout is processed using EdgeAI to collate the valuable information into smaller data packages. These packages are then uploaded to Beam’s ‘Vaantage’ data platform, where the required team members can access the information.

Digital twin

Speaking to TI at Web Summit, Tidball suggested that the data from Scout might be packaged into a digital twin 3D reconstruction of the environment which would help energy providers keep a closer eye on some of their smaller ‘problem child’ assets.

“If a windfarm has 100 assets, they may usually have six or seven ‘problem children’ that regularly have issues. Where Scout will operate is when the windfarm is up and running and turbines are spinning, and they are a business.

“Energy firms will want to spend as little money as possible maintaining their assets – but they will still need to maintain them at quite a high standard. It can cost a lot to bring in a large boat just to focus on smaller portion of the assets.

Scout – which is due to enter the market next year – will enable Beam’s customers to regularly go back in their own time frame, without a third-party crew. “We supply them with a smaller robot that they can deploy themselves,” he added.

According to Tidball, larger vessel projects using Beam’s technology typically happen that the beginning and the end of a windfarm’s life “and can run into millions.”

He claims that Scout’s AV reduces inspection time costs by “one or two orders of magnitude,” which suggests that the difference could range from 10 times to 100 times less than the traditional cost.

These calculations might seem vague. but for those interested on ROI for such projects, watch out for an independent report into windfarm technologies that is due to be published early next year.

Beam is currently operating in 19 countries and boasts over 90 customers worldwide, Tidball added. While the firm’s focus is on renewables, it also does end-of-life decommissioning for the Oil and Gas industry – Beam’s technology is useful for detecting assets and assessing their condition, some of which have been lying under the sea for more than half a century.

While the UK is the world leader in offshore wind, powering over 7.5m homes last year and becoming the nation’s main renewable energy source, Tidball says that growth in Europe is currently 3.5 times faster – and he added that Beam is set to open an office in in Germany next year.

The post Beam me down: one company’s mission to reduce cost of offshore wind appeared first on TechInformed.

While it seems a little clunky, trotting onto the stage at Web Summit this week like the half man half goat character Mr Tumnus from The Chronicles of Narnia, the Agility Robotics droid, which weighs in at 72kgs, has been designed to collaborate closely with human coworkers.

The droid has flat, spatula hands – designed to grip and move boxes around warehouses –while its legs look like they have been bolted on backwards  – but that’s so that it doesn’t kick things (or people) over when it bends down to pick up objects.

Digit has feet rather than wheels so that it can climb stairs and go where humans go. The bot is similar in height to a human because the world’s infrastructure is designed with humans in mind.

What’s more, Digit is moving closer to the manufacturing and logics sector’s 4.0 dream: it’s fully autonomous – there’s no teleoperation involved – and the bot has been trained on a range of commercial LLMs that are used to conduct a variety of workflows, depending on the use case.

Early customers 

A fleet of Digit units are already working in logistics firm GXO’s warehouses, where one of its first tasks was to move tote bags around a Connecticut Spanx factory. Agility claimed that this deal represented the world’s first Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) deployment of humanoid robots.

At Web Summit in Portugal this week Digit appeared on stage with Agility’s irrepressible CEO Peggy Johnson, who announced a second deployment of the technology at the Schaeffler Group – which wants to use “a significant number” of the humanoids in its global network of 100 plants by 2030.

Schaeffler has also become a minority investor in the company.

Johnson, who not so long ago was espousing the benefits of Magic Leap’s augmented reality headsets, claims that factories and logistics firms require humanoids to take over repetitive “back breaking” tasks like moving loads around and sorting things into different piles for hours at a time.

“It will make life easier for human workers,” she claims. “What we’re focussed on is augmenting humans,” she says. “Typically, this is part of their job, not their entire job – but it can throw out knees and it’s dirty, repetitive mind-numbing work.”

The Atlantic’s CEO Nicholas Thompson joked that he quite liked mind numbing work in his conversation with Johnson, but according to the former Microsoft exec, in the US there are currently one million unfilled vacancies in the logistics space.

“Nobody wants these roles but what this allows humans to do is free up cycles to manage,” she insists.

And with yesterday’s news that Tesla boss Elon Musk is to become the incoming Trump Administration’s efficiency adviser, these humanoid robots could be a common sight in US factories.

Musk has already announced plans to start producing and using humanoid robots in Tesla’s factories, which was perceived at the time to be part of a cost cutting drive in face of weakening demand for its cars.

Getting the proposition right is a challenge, however, as Johnson acknowledges. Hardware is, well, hard.

The company has been working on this concept for a decade and has been in customer facilities for the last three years trying to hone use cases and the robots’ design.

The good news for those working in robotics is that because processing capacity is improving rapidly, Agility can exploit a wide range of consumer LLMs to help Digit understand the world.

“We take simulation data to teach Digit new skills,” explains Johnson. “With that AI and LLM we can start to improve Digit’s semantic intelligence. So, we can give Digit commands such as new workflows.

“The robot can be doing one job in the morning and another in the afternoon, all supported by AI,” she suggests.

While Agility’s bot is AI agnostic, Johnson has observed that it executes tasks differently, depending on the LLM that it has been trained on.

Ask an Anthropic-trained Digit how to demonstrate love and it might signal that with digital heart eyes. Swap that out with a different AI model and it might line the boxes it has been moving into the shape of a heart.

Digit has one LiDAR sensor and seven cameras in its neck and waist. Some are looking downwards, checking on the bot’s position, while others are looking ahead, using perception to recognise objects, according to Johnson.

The bot also uses acoustic sensors so that commands can be given verbally. But because a factory setting tends to be noisy most of its commands are issued through an iPad.

‘Cooperative safety’ 

There are some areas where humans still outperform their robotic counterparts, Johnson admits: they can go longer on a single charge, for instance.

“The charge ratio is about 4:1 – so 4 mins of work equals one minute of charge. Which is not bad but we’re moving to 10: 1 that gives facility managers much longer periods of time to put Digit to work,” she claims, adding that the bot also can plug itself in when it realises that it is running low on batteries.

And while these bots have been designed to collaborate alongside humans, for now they need to keep a safe distance because they still struggle with precise movements and complex human interactions, which can lead to unexpected errors or accidents.

However, cooperative safety in the same proximity to human co-workers is  something that Agility is actively working on, with a concept solution expected to be available for demo mid next year. Johnson is optimistic that this feature will be commercialised “within the next 18-24 months.”

This all sounds promising, but how did Digit perform in practice on the main stage at Web Summit? Johnson gave the humanoid a basic laundry tasks to conduct (“something my husband could do with,” she joked).

Digit easily manged to put a grey shirt into a laundry basket. The AI model recognised the shirt, and through object recognition knew where the basket was.

However, the bot proved less effective at more complex tasks that had not previously been rehearsed. For instance, it was not able to put a green shirt on top of a grey shirt. It took about 10 seconds for Digit to process this information before picking up a pink shirt and put it in a basket.

The green shirt in question was also stripped. The bot performed better when the prompt was changed to a striped shirt, proving that prompt language still must be precise if Digit is used to conduct impromptu tasks.

A final task scooping up all three shirts and putting  them in the basket also took longer than it should have, because the bot chose to pick them up one at a time, rather than scooping them up as a pile as a human would have done.

Digit also dropped one shirt and had to process for ten seconds or so before it could pick it up again and complete the task.

This demo suggests that the efficiency drive Musk is hoping to achieve in his factories may be some time off,  but with increased battery power and a larger variety of swappable hands Johnson is hopeful that Agility’s robots will be able to scale.

She says that it’s less about the software or the hardware, it’s about the application.

“You can think of the hands as being a tool for whatever it is you need. There may be a way that is easiest to fold laundry, but the point is it’s swappable. We’ll aim to match the right tool with the right use case,” Johnson says.

The post Web Summit 2024: humanoid robots — has the hardware caught up with the software? appeared first on TechInformed.

It is no surprise to see this translate to more unfilled vacancies – up 30% on pre-pandemic figures in Europe according to McKinsey. For retailers, help is needed… and is on the way.

According to the same McKinsey report, the grocery worker of 2030 will spend 17% less time doing physical and manual tasks, and 32% more time using social and emotional skills, thanks in part to robotic assistants.

Putting the AI in retail

Clionadh Martin, founder of automation firm Coalescent Mobile Robotics spoke to TI at TechBBQ about how its robots are taking on the overnight hours and daytime shifts to ease employee physical demands.

“I worked with mobile robots at my previous company, and I had a friend working unsocial hours restocking at a supermarket, moving trolleys from midnight to 8 AM, with not great pay or breaks,” Martin explains.

“It seemed like the perfect task for a robot – repetitive, heavy lifting, and not motivating for people.”

In 2018, Martin founded Coalescent Mobile Robotics in Denmark, where it has since developed robots to help with these tasks, building the hardware and the software in-house.

The robots come with three skills under their belt: automated restocking of shelves, collecting products for online orders, and collecting baskets – although, these robots can be customised for other use cases if needed.

The robots come fitted with 3D cameras, laser scanners, and various internal sensors in order to carry out their tasks. They’re trained to know the shop floor inside-out. Plus, they can either be connected through Wi-Fi or a private network, as each comes with a SIM card.

“We developed everything ourselves because appearance matters in retail environments,” says Martin. “Our robots have bright colours and adapt well to operate around people.”

Essentially, the robots take to the shop floor and can carry out tasks such as pushing 180kg trolleys for restocking and filling online orders – reducing the need to push and pull heavy trolleys.

Martin explains that the robots help not only tackle challenges such as taking over undesirable tasks, but also address labour shortages, particularly with an ageing population.

On top of this, the technology can guide customers in finding products as they’re trained to know the shop floor, and consistently ensure shelves are always stocked with what they need.

Coalescent is currently working with Denmark’s largest retailer, Salling Group, to support Bilka hypermarket’s click-and-collect service. Plus, although names could not revealed yet, the firm is in talks to work with UK retailers, too.

Supermarket sweep

Having been in the robotics game for 15 years, American firm Brain Corp has over 37,000 robots operating in public space using its software.

For retail, Brain Corp’s robots can help with inventory management and remote site management, but many of its robots are used to clean, and they are becoming increasingly automated.

Michel Spruijt, president of Brain Corp says: “Five years ago, when I started at Brain Corp, the focus was on questions like, ‘Are you taking jobs from people?’”

“I tried to explain that AI is here to stay and it’s better to embrace it. Then Covid hit, and cleaning became a priority while retailers struggled to hire staff and people came to see robots as a way to take the dull, repetitive tasks rather than as job stealers,” he says.

Working with the likes of Walmart, Brain Corp’s robotic onboarding software will see its technology map out the store, and staff trained on how to use the robot’s “easy-to-use” user face.

Most stores choose to deploy the cleaner bots at night, according to Spruijt, as there are typically less customers, but this is up to the retailers.

“Once you’ve taught the machine, we have an app where you can see its performance based on square metres cleaned, how many assists it needed, and where your issue points are where you need to optimise your route,” he explains.

“At the end of the day, we want them to make the machine smarter and optimise it in the maximum way possible.”

The app also offers simple insights such as how much battery is on the machine, and with the addition of an inventory scanner, the robots can also keep track of stock levels and product localisation.

Spruijt adds that employees are still necessary as a robot can’t fill itself with cleaning liquid, for example, and maintenance checks and replacing brushes are still necessary.

“We had a test in the Netherlands with a retailer that implemented a store with no staff, allowing customers to use only self-checkouts, but it didn’t quite drive the behaviour they were looking for,” says Spruijt. “People still needed human interaction.”

The post Spillage on aisle 12: The rise of the retail robot appeared first on TechInformed.

Reece’s mother Elizabeth told the BBC: “Reece was nervous about his operation before, but we showed him pictures and he was quite excited to know a robot was operating on him.”

The surgery, which was carried out last week at Southampton Children’s Hospital, saw Reece become the first child in the UK to undergo an operation using the Versius Surgical Robotic System.

Consultant paediatric urologist Ewan Brownlee used the robot to repair a narrowing of a vessel after Reece was diagnosed with an obstruction which inhibited the flow of urine from his kidney.

Dr Brownlee said: “This has been three years in the making so it’s really exciting for the whole paediatric urology team. I’m hoping that this is the start of seeing an increase in minimally invasive surgery for children all around the UK.”

Reece’s surgery was part of an NHS trial which sees Cambridge-based CMR Surgical’s Versius used in several hospitals to increase precision through the use of small surgical instruments, robot-assisted manual control and a magnified screen.

But it marks a wider adoption of robots across the healthcare sector, which is facing significant strain, thanks to ageing populations and a backlog of patients needing treatment following the Covid-19 pandemic. Could robots solve the challenges faced by the NHS and other healthcare providers?

Rise of the machines 

In the UK an ageing population is putting pressure on healthcare services. According to the country’s Office for National Statistics, the number of people aged 65 plus will grow from 12.7 million in 2022 (19% of the population), to 22.1 million in 2072 (27% of the population).

The fact that people are living longer could be, in part, down to improved healthcare services – new treatments and technologies mean ailments that were previously terminal can now be treated. But it also increases pressure on an already overwhelmed NHS.

This is compounded by the fact that the NHS has over 100,000 vacant roles, and waiting lists are at an all-time high.

As TechInformed recently reported, some NHS Trusts are turning to data analytics to tackle growing waiting lists. However, other hospitals have identified an even more noticeable technology – robots.

In surgery, robotic assistants offer “precise control” explains Jörg Zimmer, VP at software provider BlackBerry QNX. This “ensures accurate implant positioning and improved joint function.”

Plus, robots have the ability to make smaller incisions than surgeons, resulting in reduced trauma and faster recovery times for patients, Zimmer says.

Da Vinci coding

The Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust introduced the ‘da Vinci Xi robot’ to the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch for this very reason.

The da Vinci Xi robot is positioned directly over a patient during surgery. It has four arms – three that can hold different surgical instruments and a fourth that holds 3D cameras. Each arm is operated by a computer that replicates the movements of an operating surgeon.

Brought in by business change consultancy Entec Si, the da Vinci Xi robot has been implemented to help with urological procedures and surgeries that can provide better outcomes for those affected with prostate cancer.

Entec Si ensured the introduction of the robot came with a “fit for purpose training plan,” explains Eman Al-Hillawi, CEO of the firm – including on-site training for surgeons, visits to other sites that already have the da Vinci Xi Robot, and procedural material to support learning.

“Having experienced surgeons on hand when the newly trained surgeons work through their first few procedures was also critical and extremely helpful,” says Al-Hillawi.

Alongside the technical installation of the robot, it required new technology infrastructure, including connectivity (such as upgrading the network), new applications and databases to be installed.

In addition, physical spaces, structural integrity of the rooms, load bearing and other construction challenges had to be addressed, the CEO explains.

Al-Hillawi says that the community around the hospital feel positive about the robot – during the lead-up to the implementation, local residents raised or donated a total of  £50,000 to ensure the project could go ahead.

“Before the introduction of the da Vinci Xi robot, many patients facing prostate cancer were forced to travel miles around the country to access treatment,” she adds.

This meant that, at the time, at least 80 to 100 patients each year were travelling away from their local area for the operation.

“With the increased capability brought about by the da Vinci Xi, patients now have faster, easier access to treatment in their local area.”

Since its implementation, Al-Hillawi says the hospital has recorded high levels of satisfaction with most patients being able to leave the day after surgery, a decrease from the four to five days needed before the robot was introduced.

“As this process is less invasive for the patient than laparoscopic procedures, the recovery times are also much quicker, with less blood loss and reduced complication rates,” she explains.

For surgeons, the robot means more training opportunities in this new field of surgery, as well as improved health benefits.

“These include the reduction in the likelihood that surgeons will develop musculoskeletal injuries, particularly in the back and hand which can lead to early retirement,” says Al-Hillawi.

Plus, “this means that the NHS Trust will be able to keep its skilled workforce for longer, and surgeons will be able to stay in their careers longer,” plus, the NHS Trust will be able to attract new talent.

Spray and go 

Robots are also being deployed to relieve overworked hospital staff by helping with tasks such as room disinfectant and medicine delivery.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Swift Robotics received a £100k grant from Innovate UK, with support from Grantify, to build a UV disinfection robot.

“This initial success set the foundation for our growth and innovation,” says Michal Kostyal, co-founder of Swift Robotics.

“By introducing our robots, healthcare staff can focus more on direct patient care, which is especially critical during flu season when many staff members are ill.”

The robots are designed and manufactured in-house, in the UK.

Roaming the hospital floors, the bots are fully autonomous and modular in design – fitted with sensors combined with the proprietary software stack, the robots are able to “execute efficient dynamic path planning, obstacle avoidance, and localisation in a whole host of environments with varying complexities,” explains Kostyal.

The two bots not only help with cleaning, but are also used to deliver medicine, and medical tools across the floor.

Recently, the firm secured £1million in funding to enhance its AI and computer vision algorithms.  In collaboration with the Open University and Cranfield University, the funding will go towards boosting hospital resilience through the deployment of autonomous robots, explains Kostyal.

“Our robots are already in use in the UK and internationally, and this new funding will enable us to further improve and expand their capabilities.”

Get with the programming

BlackBerry QNX’s Zimmer said that to make further technological advances within the NHS a reality, “there needs to be a comprehensive strategy and investment in place to support manufacturers of these technologies and transform the industry to provide better patient outcomes.”

He explains that the success of robot-assisted surgeries relies on sophisticated software solutions that enable exacting precision and seamless communication between surgeons and robotic platforms.

Additionally, software developers building surgical robot applications need to ensure high-performance and hard real-time deterministic behaviour, so the robots can respond instantly to commands with low latency – a feature that is particularly critical in delicate procedures.

Robot assited surgeries also need to be fail-safe and fault-tolerant, so that a failed component or process won’t take down other components, the system can be restarted, or taken to a design-safe state.

“When it comes to reliability in surgical robotics, manufacturers need a trusted and proven solution,” says Zimmer.

The robot must show real-time deterministic behaviour, and adherence to rigorous safety standards, combined with a comprehensive set of security features, he says.

“Choosing the right technology will allow us to revolutionise the field of robot-assisted surgeries, setting new standards for the future of healthcare.”

The post How are robots easing pressure on healthcare? appeared first on TechInformed.

Elon Musk has revealed plans to start using humanoid robots to build Tesla’s electric cars from next year.

The Tesla boss took to social media to announce that the EV car maker will be the first manufacturer to leverage its own Optimus humanoid robots in production lines.

The Optimus bot has been in the works since 2021, with a prototype unveiled the following year. Musk said that the vehicle maker hopes to expand production next year, and then to sell the robots to other firms from 2026 onward.

“Tesla will have genuinely useful humanoid robots in low production for Tesla internal use next year and, hopefully, high production for other companies in 2026,” Musk said in his post on X.

Ofcom slaps TikTok with £1.9m fine over child safety

UK regulator Ofcom has fined social media giant TikTok to the tune of £1.9 million for failing to respond to a request for information on its parent controls safety feature.

The watchdog, which was given additional powers in 2022 to punish firms that fail to remove child sexual abuse content, said TikTok had failed to provide complete information on the uptake of its “Family Pairing” control.

The new powers, handed as part of the Online Safety Bill, allow Ofcom to fine companies who fail to respond to statutory information requests in a complete and timely fashion.

Ofcom said it had requested information about the Family Pairing parental control last summer, to assess the effectiveness of TikTok’s protections for teenage users.

TikTok provided a response to the request in September 2023, but retracted the information a few months later, Ofcom revealed in a blog post, leading to the fine.

Read Ofcom’s blog here

Oversight Board criticises Meta over AI generated images

Meta has been criticised by its own oversight board of its rules on adult images generated using artificial intelligence.

The Meta Oversight Board claimed Facebook’s parent company needs to be clearer about banning sexually explicit images made of real people. It also demanded the company introduce rules to stop these images spreading across its platforms.

The board issued the ruling after reviewing two pornographic fakes of famous women which were created using AI. These were then posted on Facebook and Instagram.

Meta has confirmed it plans to review the board’s recommendation, although it has no obligation to follow its advice.

The Oversight Board was established by Meta to assess any controversial decisions it might make. While it is funded by Meta, the board has operational independence, while the social media giant can choose whether to accept its suggestions.

Read more

India scraps “Google Tax” on digital services

The Indian government has scrapped a controversial levy on digital services rendered to Indian businesses by foreign firms after pressure from the US.

India introduced the expanded “Google Tax” in 2020, widening the scope of its 2016 equalization levy – which charged offshore firms hosting advertisements targeted at Indian consumers – to include other e-commerce services.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has now introduced the Finance Bill 2024 that will scrap the equalization levy on a wide array of services, including cloud and e-commerce offerings, form August 1.

The move will be welcomed by the US who had claimed in 2021 that the expanded levy was discriminatory against US businesses due to the high number of digital services firms who were offering services in India.

The Biden administration hit back by imposing its own tariff of up to 25% for up to $2 billion of goods from nations that implement digital services taxes, though this was suspended almost immediately.

Read more

The post Tesla to turn to humanoid robots and Meta slapped down by Oversight board appeared first on TechInformed.

Last year, the team evaluated the robot’s features in zero-gravity scenarios on a European Space Agency parabolic flight.

Parabolic flights — typically carried out twice a year — are the only sub-orbital carriers that allow scientists to conduct in-person experiments under conditions of microgravity.

The ‘SpaceHopper’ project was launched two and a half years ago as a focus project for bachelor’s degree students. Five master’s degree students and one doctoral student are now continuing it as a regular research project.

ETH Zurich student Valerio Schelbert explained: “The prototype we’ve developed moves asteroids by hopping. It uses the low levels of gravity on asteroids to travel.

According to fellow project member Fabio Buhler, there are two reasons to explore asteroids in space.

“The first is to gain new insights into the universe and our history. The second is that many asteroids contain rare materials that could be valuable to humanity in the future.”

One challenge in developing exploration robots such as these is the very low gravity prevailing on small celestial bodies (such as comets and asteroids) as opposed to larger bodies such as Earth.

Buhler added: “Until we tested the SpaceHopper in zero-gravity, we had no idea whether the robot would actually work and were very excited when it did. It was a massive weight off our shoulders.”

According to the ETH Zurich team, the experiment demonstrated how the robot could use its legs to reposition itself and jump in specific directions. “Overall, it was very successful,” Buhler added.

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Forget the doom and gloom—here TI reports on three different AI firms using AI for good: AiDash for biodiversity and property development, AutoDesk for coral reef restoration, and Accion, which is using it to help marginalised communities and even ensure that the tech itself isn’t discriminatory.

Biodiversity with AiDash

According to figures from the Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII), the UK is one of the most biodiversity-depleted countries in the world. However, a BII study found that the UK has just half of its biodiversity left, leaving it languishing in the bottom 10% of the world’s countries.

AiDash is a firm focused on making infrastructure industries climate-resilient through satellites and AI. For biodiversity, it uses satellite imagery to get a bird’s eye view of what’s happening on the ground.

Working with satellite data providers, once an area is requested for analysis, AiDash will simply source an image that might already have been used for analysis.

According to Shashin Mishra, VP of EMEA at AiDash, the firm’s model seeks to identify exactly how many habitats there are by labelling each one. It then detects any invasive plants that pose a risk to native species, offering insights into the health profile of fauna.

This not only helps those fighting to improve the country’s biodiversity but also helps industries such as the UK’s property sector, where they must legally meet Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) requirements before building on a site.

BNG requirements mean developers must ensure their sites result in more or a better quality natural habitat than what was there before.

“When a property developer starts a project, they’re going to have a baseline preliminary survey done on the site,” explains Mishra.

This is typically done by an ecologist, but Mishra argues that these kinds of surveys lack accuracy and detail.

“Typically, what these surveys do not tell us is how much biodiversity is there and what kind of condition it might be in,” he says. “That’s what we deliver. They can see that as a report, and they can open it up on the web and interact with the system and see exactly what’s there.”

Under the sea

If we’re looking for true biodiversity, there are few places more diverse than coral reefs. Based on species diversity, for example, the Great Barrier Reef – the world’s largest coral reef – is one of the most diverse habitats on the planet.

Coral reefs also play a key role in our food security, with over one billion people reliant on reefs to support their food supply chain in some form. A quarter of marine species live in reefs. Yet, according to the UN, between 70% to 90% of coral reefs could be lost within the next 26 years.

“Reefs are critical carbon sinks,” says Nic Carey, senior researcher at Autodesk Robotics, “and they contribute to maintaining ocean pH levels and sustaining marine health, even well outside their immediate environment.”

Autodesk Robotics researches the future of robotics in industries such as manufacturing, architecture, construction and nonprofits with an underlying ethos of creating a better world.

To save coral reefs, Carey says the world needs to restore and plant hundreds of hectares per year, minimum. Currently, the world’s combined efforts fall far short, with only about one hectare planted per year.

This “serious mismatch in necessary goals comes from the fact that “there simply isn’t enough human workforce to address the scale of coral seeding and planting,” she explains

Reef monitoring is already abundant, and AI plays a key role in helping scientists predict bleaching patterns and the depletion of biodiversity. But, according to Carey, coral restoration projects are still underserved by automation.

Most conservation-restoration programmes are still done completely manually through coral seeding and planting in nurseries. Although seeding and planting is not a difficult task, Carey says, it i slow and extremely labour-intensive.

In 2020, Autodesk Technology Centre in San Francisco partnered with Australian restoration firm Coral Maker in order to test AI-powered robotics to automate the process of seeding and propagation of corals

By using off-the-shelf robots and sensors alongside open-source or commercially available software, the partnership is able to automate coral planting and seeding.

“Robots offer a significant force multiplier, but they’re also ideally suited to automation because their tasks are repetitive,” says Carey

With a combination of robotic arms and image sensors, the robot cuts fragments of an existing live coral into smaller pieces, glues them into plugs and implants them into limestone ‘skeletons’ to eventually grow into a bigger colony.

The skeletons are in the process of being mass-manufactured using recycled stone composite. With this and the robots, AutoDesk says it has the potential to scale 10,000 skeletons per day, each with the capacity to hold six to eight ‘fragments’ and ultimately help bring biodiversity back to the oceans.

Financial inclusion

Washington-based international nonprofit Accion uses technology such as AI to support small business owners, smallholder farmers, and women who are most impacted by climate change, economic instability, and conflict with financial services.

For instance, Apollo Agriculture, a portfolio company of Accion Venture Lab, uses technologies to support small-scale farmers across Africa in increasing their profits and farming more sustainably.

Its AI and automated operations enable farmers to access optimised financing, farm products, digital advice, and risk management solutions. For example, its predictive repayment propensity models help Apollo access risk in the market where farmers tend to be excluded from formal financial systems and absent a formal credit history.

Accion also includes the think tank Center for Financial Inclusion (CFI). It has published a toolkit for venture capitalists to vet start-ups and ensure that they do not use data that can lead to discrimination against people who are already economically vulnerable.

“The topics we’ve been examining are really with the aim to help build trust and digital finance by bringing more transparency and accountability for data practises that providers are using,” explains Alexandra Rizzi, senior research director, consumer data opportunities and risks at CFI.

“That includes issues around privacy, around AI, around data governance, and that transparency and accountability could be brought by different actors, whether those are impact investors who are asking before they invest in a particular fintech: How are you building your models? Where are you getting your data from?”

During the Covid pandemic, Rizzi recalls when many businesses had to close and needed access to relief because their income had essentially come to a halt.

“A number of countries did cash transfer programmes, giving out payments, but in many of those emerging markets, there were not strong social registries of who should actually be targeted,” says Rizzi.

The West African country of Togo launched a programme called Novice, which used an AI model that crunched satellite data, as well as mobile money transactional behaviour, used as a proxy for someone’s economic status and looked at the poverty levels of certain geographies.

“In the absence of a robust social registry database to say, well, this individual needs this economic payout, they were able to target individuals and build an AI model that leveraged the data.”

“So there are all kinds of incredible use cases I think that AI is already achieving,” says Rizzi. “But we also want to make sure that it doesn’t lead to unintentional harm or further exclusion, and so our work has been to raise very clearly the opportunities that are out there, but also make sure that these fintechs are aware of some of the potential risks.”

For instance, the CFI knows that in certain geographies there are gaps between men and women and ownership of phones, and so they have very different data profiles.

“So, our AI models need to adequately acknowledge these kinds of gaps in data trails between men and women and also with other excluded marginalised groups.”

The post AI for good: transforming biodiversity, coral restoration, and financial inclusion appeared first on TechInformed.

The Norwegian firm – formerly known as Halodi Robotics until a rebrand in March last year – says it has trained 30 bots on several individual tasks, using imitation learning via video and teleoperation.

That base model was then fine-tuned toward specific work – such as warehouse tasks, general door manipulation, and then finally trained the bots on the specific jobs they had to do.

Like muscle memory, 1x claims its androids “get better at common tasks every time. “Then that knowledge makes new tasks like “grab that lightbulb” even more seamless,” the firm added in a blog post on its website.

The robot, known as Eve, has an LED smiley face, wheels rather than legs and claws rather than hands.

“Every behaviour you see in the above video is controlled by a single vision-based neural network that emits actions at 10Hz. The neural network consumes images and emits actions to control the driving, the arms, gripper, torso and head,” the blog post continued.

“The video contains no teleoperation no computer graphics, no cuts, no video speed ups, no scripted trajectory playback. IT’s all controlled by neural networks, all autonomous, all 1X [real time] speed.”

According to the firm, the systems were first deployed on the bot in 2023 for patrolling tasks.

TechInformed met 1X CEO Bernt Øivind Børnich and one of his Eves at ADT’s booth at CES last year for a demo of its patrol work (see main picture). Back then, Eve was controlled using VR and AI, with a robot operator in the control centre.

A susequent round of funding ($23.5m) led by Chat GPT creator Open AI has seen the firm make significant strides in the bot’s autonomy – as demonstrated by those tasks in the video – which appear to demonstrate that the  bots have learned purely from data.

The firm claims that the Eves can also open doors and take themselves to charging stations and plug themselves in.

The company is now on a mission to create robots with practical, real-world applications, Børnich added, and is working towards releasing commercial models in Norway and the US.

“Our androids will eventually work among people, one by one,” Børnich said. “And unlike other androids that have to slow down to be functional, 1X’s models work at 1x (real time) speed,” he claimed.

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